Thomson’s Grass Valley Viper FilmStream camera was unveiled at the 2002 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) confab, and with its ability to record uncompressed 4:4:4 RGB images, the camera system was one of the hottest product introductions at the show. It has since become one of the most closely watched new camera technologies. The general feedback is that the images captured by the camera are gorgeous. The questions surrounding it primarily focus on how one handles recording the information, as well as the postproduction workflow. People are wondering, for instance, how do you manage the data? Store it? Get it to editorial?
At NAB ’02, the Director’s Friend, a digital disk recorder (DDR), was the only option for recording, and it offered a partial answer to these questions. This past year, Grass Valley’s team has been testing recording options from many third-party manufacturers. Now, the options are multiplying at a dizzying pace. And some believe it’s the commercial world where the Viper is now positioned to take off.
The Viper can be used in four recording modes, including a dual-link 4:4:4 RGB processed image or 4:2:2 YUV processed image (the latter of which can be recorded to standard HD formats such as HDCAM or HD D5).
The highest quality level is "FilmStream," an unprocessed and un-color corrected 4:4:4 RGB image with tremendous latitude for post. This mode has received the most attention; however, it also requires the most storage for recording. HD Stream, the fourth option, is essentially a 4:2:2 version of the FilmStream mode, so it too preserves the data without processing.
"I honestly don’t know why we wouldn’t see a huge trend toward using the Viper for commercials," says Marker Karahadian, president of Plus8digital, Burbank, Calif., one of the first rental houses to offer the Viper. (The other U.S. rental location is Burbank-based Bexel.) "You get more latitude. The benefit of the Viper in the FilmStream mode in the commercial world is that you are starting off with an extremely flexible digital file that can be manipulated in postproduction. We coined the term ‘digital immediate’ for FilmStream material. It’s like having a digital intermediate—immediately. And as storage capacity increases, workflow will become easier, prices will come down, and your post workflow will not be too much more difficult than it is today."
There is already experimentation with the Viper occurring on some high-profile commercials, although none have yet aired, and the clients could not be disclosed at press time. For one of those projects, Digital Domain (DD), Venice, Calif., is serving as visual effects studio. Michael Taylor, VP of digital studios at DD, believes that the Viper will absolutely find a home in the commercial arena "because of the flexibility of the system. You can see what you are doing [in full resolution] on the set," he related. "You can quickly move through production, as there is no reloading the camera. It’s a wonderful acquisition medium. The issue is, [however,] where do you store it?"
Recording Options
"The ultimate nirvana would be a small cartridge that holds sixty minutes of solid state recording, is incredibly cheap and fits on the back of a camera," relates Mark Chiolis, marketing manager for acquisition and production at Thomson Grass Valley. He notes, however, that in the meantime, there are numerous options available, and Thomson has already tested seven that have worked.
The first entailed the CineControl recording system and CineReel portable disk recorder, both from DVS, Hanover, Germany. This technology—which can store up to 90 minutes of material—is the successor to Director’s Friend, which was acquired by DVS. The S.two recorder from Reno-based S.two (the team that built the Sierra Design Labs’ HD disk recorder) is an option that gives users a product similar to a film magazine, with a cartridge that can accommodate 18 to 36 minutes of material. A third option is the UDR-2E portable disk recorder from Heisoku Giken, Tokyo.
"So far, testing of the S.two and DVS devices has shown that these can go right into the rack of the new Grass Valley Specter FS (FilmStream), meaning that one can skip the ingest stage and postproduction can begin immediately," notes Chiolis. He believes that material from other systems should also have the ability to go directly into the Specter FS, as well as directly into such tools as Quantel’s iQ and Discreet’s Lustre.
Baytech Cinema, San Francisco, has developed a prototype of a product it calls CineRAM, which can record and store five minutes of FilmStream material while attached to the Viper on a Steadicam or other type of mobile system, meaning that a director and cinematographer would be able to work with the Viper untethered from cables. Then that material could be downloaded into one of the other recording devices.
The Sony SRW 5000—a compressed recording system that can record dual-stream RGB or FilmStream (compressed)—and Panasonic’s HD D5 can be used to record HD Stream. Accom’s WDX digital disk recorder can handle all modes of Viper material.
Meanwhile, companies such as SGI, BOXX and Maximum Throughput have reported that they intend to build products that could be used to record and store Viper material.
Plus8digital has two Vipers available, and offers S.two and the Sony SRW 5000s for recording. "I’m very excited about the Viper," relates Karahadian. "Our company’s goal is to eliminate the notion that you have to make the pictures perfect in the camera. If you have the light and the performance, that’s the most important thing. Color correction doesn’t need to be done in real time. [In post], the director of photography, colorist and agency can sit in a room and make the color perfect." He likens the FilmStream mode to "taking a telecine, putting a film lens on it and pointing it directly at your scene."
In The Field & Post
In discussing Thomson’s postproduction strategy, Chiolis notes, "our goal was to get the disk system as close to the tape model as possible, and maintain the highest quality with the easiest possible workflow."
Quite a bit of experimentation is already occurring in that space, including at Burbank-headquartered Technicolor Creative Services (a Thomson company). Jean Luc Moullet, VP/general manager of the company’s Media Asset Management Group, Los Angeles, explained that the unit has already put in place a workflow where the S.two magazines provide timecode, and the material is ingested into a content management system where each take is marked as an individual asset. "While doing that, we create a proxy of the take," he says. "We also do an HD video out of S.two recorder, and the HD tape is used for traditional post and for dailies."
He adds that at the end of the post process, Technicolor would receive the EDL and provide the select scene to the people during the conform. He describes the workflow as that for the "next generation digital lab."
Taylor reported that on the first commercial shoot, the team used the DVS CineReel system, recording between 500 GB and one TB per day (what he estimates was 30-60 minutes of uncompressed material). The files were transferred to Sledgehammer from Montreal-based Maximum Throughout. Taylor noted that they were unable to do real-time because the Sledgehammer could only handle 4:2:2, "but we are expecting a 4:4:4 card," he says. "I know it’s going to get better."
He adds that there were other teething problems to working with the data—for instance, they didn’t get timecode on this first shoot. For the second Viper shoot, Taylor reported that they used the S.two system; this time they knew what to expect and did get timecode. "You have to keep a lot of data until you decide on the final cut," he explains, "because the data is like a film negative."
Taylor notes that once they got the footage into postproduction, "it was the same workflow as 2k, which we deal with all the time." So he expects that this process will only get smoother.
Of course, the feature arena is also watching this development closely. David Stump, ASC, recently shot Red Riding Hood, an independent feature directed by Randal Kleiser (Grease) with the Viper, recording in HD Stream mode to an HD D5. HD stream gives a lot more information than regular HD, and it’s fairly straightforward to de-log and turn into RGB, he says.
For part of the shoot, Stump shot 4:4:4, recording to the CineRAM, untethered, which he says "works great. …Thomson and [Baytech] really have their finger on the pulse. The world of video is really trying to catch up with companies like Thomson."
For Red Riding Hood, which is currently in postproduction, Stump reported that almost every shot is a blue screen or green screen shot. And for this sort of work, he sees only positives for working with Viper. "In terms of any kind of acquisition format, I always try to give myself the biggest bandwidth possible," he relates. "The extra color information that you get from 4:4:4 so vastly helps in pulling a green screen matte—matting greatly improves. I think it’s a phenomenal camera. And I think it pushes the envelope in terms of what can be done with a digital camera."
